The Humble Indie Bundle is back for a third round of pay-what-you-want, DRM- …

The latest edition of the Humble Indie Bundle—a pay-what-you-want sale that lets consumers decide how much money to give to developers and how much to donate to charities—has launched and already taken in more than $500,000.

While the previous edition of the bundle focused on one developer, Frozenbyte, the latest is once again offering five different games by five different indie developers. On offer this time are Crayon Physics Deluxe, Cogs, VVVVVV, HammerFight, and And Yet It Moves. As always, each game is DRM-free and available on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Many of these games are making their debuts on new platforms as part of the promotion.

Humble Indie Bundle 3

With just under two weeks to go, more than 115,000 bundles have been sold for an average price of just under $5. So far the promotion has earned more than half a million dollars. As a display of just how great the indie gaming community can be, a number of the top donators are indie developers themselves, including Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson with over $4,000, Braid creator Jonathan Blow with more than $2,700, and SteamBirds creator Andy Moore with the mature total of $580.08 (think about it).

As per usual, the bundle asks buyers to divide up their donations however they see fit, divvying up funds between Child's Play, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the actual developers, and the Humble Bundle itself. Money donated to the bundle goes toward paying for expenses like bandwidth.

All together the five games would cost more than $50, but for the next 13 days you can pay what you like right here.

Latest Ars Video >

War Stories | Ultima Online: The virtual ecology

When creating Ultima Online, Richard Garriott had grand dreams. He and Starr Long planned on implementing a virtual ecology into their massively multiplayer online role-playing game. It was an ambitious system, one that would have cows that graze and predators that eat herbivores. However, once the game went live a small problem had arisen...

War Stories | Ultima Online: The virtual ecology

War Stories | Ultima Online: The virtual ecology

When creating Ultima Online, Richard Garriott had grand dreams. He and Starr Long planned on implementing a virtual ecology into their massively multiplayer online role-playing game. It was an ambitious system, one that would have cows that graze and predators that eat herbivores. However, once the game went live a small problem had arisen...